ACROSS THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE OF OUR OWN PERSONALITIES

This year I did not want to send a classical new year's eve card to you my friends. I sent some of you cards on which paintings of famous artists were printed. Because I believe that they can give you more than the Santa Claus and his bag full of presents can offer... Because I know that these abstract paintings mean a lot more substance than the Santa Claus...Because I can see that the curves of the designs are more aesthetic than a bow... And because I guess that you will also agree... My wishes were identified with those cards. I sent you, my family, the card of Picasso's “Pastorale”, wishing that each one of us would be as joyful as the figures on that painting. To you my dear cousin who is getting ready to get married, I sent Gustav Klimt's “Fullfillment-L'accomplissement” for you have had to fight for making your wish come true, for making your entourage accept the person who loved. To you my dear best friend, I sent the vivacious “Painting” of Joan Miro so that it would add a little bit of color to your life as few of life's colors and round lines seem to have been spared for your share in life...

And to most of you, I sent the card on which stood a tree with bare branches.The tree was by a riverside. There was a rowing boat tied to it a bit further. On the other bank of the river stood an army of green trees one after another that are so alike. I sent you the card with this tree picture on, because I know that it can be more beautiful and charming than a decorated pine tree because its branches are bare and you can decorate it as you wish now.

I sent it to you, thinking that this may be exactly how you perceive yourselves in life, just like a dead tree with bare branches. Believe me, it is better to be a tree that lives through the seasons of life as they should be lived, in cold winter with its branches under heavy snow, one that loses its leaves in autumn, one that knows how to blossom again and again its gorgeous flowers in springs, then one that bears fruit is summers, one that is fed from the soil by its own roots rather than being an artificially decorated plastic pine tree, one that is lightened by little lamps as it does not have the capacity to lighten itself with its own inner light, one that is situated in the middle of the living room with a pot labelled “the others”, one that shows its green leaves all the time as if the changing seasons of life would not change it.

It is such a tree that only decorates itself with what belongs to it naturally, it cannot fit the pots, it demands that its roots embrace the soil fully, it demands that its branches would reach out to the clouds, that sun would touch its leaves, it is one that does not insist to be accompanied by light all the time, one that can find its way even in the pitchest darkness. It is such a tree that others can trust it and tie their rowing boats to it. It is such a tree that the birds entrust with their nests. It is such a tree that is alive and it is connected to one single thing: the nature, the source of all life.

Once you start perceiving yourself like this in life, you don't care about the bumps on the road. You are full of life in fact both when your branches are green or when your leaves are fallen. Life consists of many seasons: sorrow, joy, victory, grief, love, fear and so many others. Each one of these has its own beauty and you should not react to each and every season with the same attitude. Let the winter freeze you, let the fall make your leaves fall after the summer burns them up with its sun...

Let sorrow pale you, let joy turn you into green, bloom with victories, dry up with grief, bear fruit with love, shiver with fear as long as you live the season in which you are. Do not try to remain green because you need to look strong all the time because the real strength is to express the feelings. Dont forget that the pine tree became the Xmas tree because it is green all the time and millions are cut down every winter for this.

You, you should embrace the soil with your roots, you should profit from the minerals of the earth, grow up towards the altitudes. Regrow your leaves, bloom, bear fruits. Does it rain? Let it wash your leaves! Does it blow like crazies? So what if your branches are bowed a bit? If you have made all of these the joys of life, who can be sturdier than you are?

Let some people rest under the shadow of your giant body. Let an ivy grow by holding on to you. Let even the mushrooms grow at the bottom of you, dont resist them, let your northbound get covered with moss and let the lost ones ask their way to you, let a woodpecker make her nest inside your trunk, let the monkeys do somersaults down your branches. Let the sun and the fullmoon lighten you up instead of the colored lamps. On one hand, let the insects carry your pollens to four corners, on the other make love to the wind that you will spread your seeds even to further distances.

So you were a bare dead tree with empty branches to begin with, right? And now, can you see your alternatives? You are the ones to green-up in life. Your leaves cannot turn green if you do not suck the knowledge out of the soil of reason and be washed by the rains of love. You will bloom and bear fruit, moreover you will inseminate others by sending them your pollens so that they too can turn green, they too can bloom and bear fruit. You will create spaces of shadows for others in life so that they can come find the cool when they find themselves in a flaming spot in life. You will lend wings to people so that those who are not as strong and sturdy will still be able to reach to the sunrays. It will be evident that you look towards one side, that you take sides, it will be evident that your north side will be covered with moss so that people will be able to find their ways by looking at you when they get lost.

I know, it looks almost impossible to do all these. Because today nuclear wastes are present in the soil as well as the minerals. Rains are no longer pure water at +4°C, they turned acidic. The bird species that you hope will come and nest on your branches risk going extinct, the mushrooms on your bottom are poisionus, the fishing boat that docks itself to your trunk trawls the fish on the seabeds, in your shadow some people are raping some other, the ozone layer is at 50% capacity, the sunrays do more than warming up. The ivies that grow up holding on to your trunk embrace you but they squeeze you too hard to the point of suffocating you, those that you have sent your pollens are barren, the seasons have lost their balance, they seem to be intertwined, one gets suprised and cannot figure out if he should lose its leaves or bloom.

Exactly because of these, I wanted to send you the card with the picture of the bare tree. So that it will remind you of these. So that it will remind you that the only chance we have at jumping the cliff between who we are and who we should be is through the suspension bridge across our own personality.

SOLITUDE

Solitude of all kinds is a crime.

F.Nietzsche

“I wish this trial would never end...”. said the atheist journalist character in the play (Monkey Trial). In early 20th century, in an American town, a high school teacher who was teaching the Evolution Theory of Charles Darwin, was seen as challenging the holy book and therefore the State laws and he was being tried in court for this crime. The trial attracted the attention of the entire country and the journalist was wishing that this trial would never end both because of his professional concerns and because of his spiritual beliefs leading to a perception of the trial as a comedy. However, as every judicial case, this trial also came to an end, the defendant teacher was found guilty but the public opinion had grasped one truth thanks to his lawyer: The freedom of the human brain to think and the right of man to think erroneously was holier than the holybooks. Although the teacher was found guilty, the judge, fearing the reaction of the public opinion, gave a minimum sentence to the defendant. The lawyer had taught the society the lesson to be learnt from this trial. This lawyer who seemed to be sitting in the lap of rationalism also was a believer. At the end of the play, as he was leaving the courtroom, he placed the Bible and the Origin of Species side by side into his suitcase. He had defended this case, not because he believed in the truthfulness of Darwinism or in the wrongfulness of the Bible, but because he believed in the human brain. As he was leaving the courtroom as such, we had already begun applauding the play.

And my question : “Will I not be able to see a decent theatre play in Istanbul this year?” was thus answered. I was very happy thinking about the limited number of plays that left a trace within me. And then I remembered these few plays that left a trace. Of course, some trace must have been left for me from this play as well. There were a few sentences echoing inside my mind but one of them stood out and was continuously wandering inside my mind. “ I hope this trial would never end..." Ah, said I to myself, ah my dear journalist brother. If you had taken a look at world history, if you were able to project the future by looking at the references of the society and of the century in which you live today, you would not be laying out this sentence. Because you would know that this is a case that is not only judicial, but it is a trial of humanity and therefore it would last until humankind can truly be human. Because we have not been creatures that are fit for the identity we call human, this trial has not ended till now and if I can be so farsighted as to make projections for the future by looking at the references of the society and the century in which I live today, I can tell you that it is not likely to end in the near future. The room in which the trial takes place is not a courtroom but the world stage.

Another interesting trace left from the play was a dilemma which most people fall into: a dilemma of belief and knowledge. Maybe I should say the contrast of materialism and idealism. If I should speak on my own behalf, idealism was never close to my heart. Although I might be OK in accepting the presence of an entity that I would believe in and that is called "God" by several religions, this entity I have in mind is beyond the concept of God introduced to us by religions. I have always been very very reserved about the phenomenon of religion: I believe we would be able to do much better things on this world if it were not for the religions and that the world would be a much better and peaceful place without religions. I think this opinion of mine has been reinforced by Turan Dursun, most books of whom I have read. As for the materialist philosophy, which I have read and thought extensively about some time ago, it has disappointed me by basing so many things on randomness, because of the importance I attributed to the word "scientific", although I cannot refuse the integrity of the theory within itself. I think I would be one of those "agnostics" who are often humiliated and ridiculed by the historical materialists. To be frank, I cannot care less, it does not bother me. I think I am playing the lawyer in the play. While doing so, I am more interested in the question " Where are we?" than the questions "Where do we come from?" and "Where are we headed?". This question of "Where are we?" embraces the other two questions anyway. Because if we are here now, we are obviously coming from some place and as I do not believe that we have reached the end of history as some suggest, it is definite that we are headed some place. What matters is where we are now in this trial? If we can see where we are, we can more easily perceive where we come from and where we are headed to and end up in integrity.

And as these thoughts traveled through my mind, a more personal idea was caught on the fishhook of my mind. To know where exactly we stand on the scale of the concept of humanity in the world, it is probably a point so far away that I will not be able to grasp today with my current accumulation of knowledge of the world. But where do I stand in my life on the scale of being human? Where do I come from? Where am I headed? Where am I? The reason I am here today is my yesterday and it is my today which will guide me into my tomorrow. So what should I include in my present tense, in today so that I can reach to the tomorrow I wish for?

Of course, here my concern is not the problem of grasping existentialism, it is how I grasp my own life. This is not to say that I refute the philosophical aspects of such ontological thinking and cast them aside. It is just that from time to time, it is more vital for one to know where he personally stands in life, how one feels herself rather than knowing the story of her physical and spiritual existence on this earth. And how one perceives, how one feels herself in life gains the utmost importance.

Therefore what I want to talk about tonight are actually not existentialist dilemmas, contrasts of religion vs. reason and the humanity trials they give birth to. However as they are the ones that have motivated me to write what I am about to write right now, I started by referring to them and I have molded my thoughts up to here. And I wanted to share these because I have been thinking for a long time: if Nietzsche was a judge and if I were the accused in his courtroom, he would find me guilty of a crime I did not want to behold, of a solitude that I wish I did not have. And this is where I am in life, this is how I perceive myself: Alone/lonely. At this point I sit down and think more carefully: What should I include in my present so that I can reach to the tomorrow I wish for?

A while ago, in an essay I wrote, I had likened life to a painting. Everyone has a painting and everyone draws and paints their own picture. Yet one must not ignore the terrific interaction among the paintings and the painters. We may be the leading painter on our own paintings but every painting does not only have a single painter, no painting is the work of a single painter. As you draw your own painting, others, consciously or not, are working on your painting and as the others deal with their own paintings, you - consciously or not- are adding a few brush strokes to their paintings.

I think we should categorize these external painters who take part in our paintings, who work on them, into two groups. In the first category, there are those who are the people around, "entourage" in a sense. Mostly we are bored of their existence and they paint on our paintings without our permission or will. I think when Sartre said "The hell is other people" (Huis Clos), they were the ones he had on his mind. In the second category, there are those who took the brush and drew significant lines and figures, painted beautiful colors to our paintings in various stages of our lives. Some have exited from our lives completely, some are still in our lives and sometimes they drop by to draw and paint more.

Actually it is very complex because the ones who intervene into our paintings as a first category painters can show their influence as second category painters in some other people's paintings. Or when we draw hell for some people, we might be drawing significant lines to the paintings of some other people.

I am quite lucky when it comes to the first category painters because my brush and my technique are stronger than theirs therefore I never let them draw figures of hell in my painting. My painting did not turn into a heaven because to be able to draw and paint the heaven, it is the influence of the second category painters that count. Well it did not turn into heaven, but it turned out to be life, just like life is supposed to be. Ironically I have been both fortunate and unfortunate when it came to putting the design of heaven into my painting, I am referring to the second category painters here. I have been unfortunate because, these second category painters have not been very helpful to me for drawing and painting the heaven. Still, each one drew beautiful lines on my canvas, painted colors of life and most important of all, what they could not draw and paint, I learnt to draw and paint by myself.

Maybe it is just a cold consolation to say that I have undertaken their mission and have become an excellent life painter as these second category painters I found were not very good artists. But I believe the ones who profited the most from this situation are those whose paintings I work on as a second category painter. Because as much as I have drawn and painted beautiful things to my own painting, I believe I have also painted beautiful stuff on other people's paintings. Yet, being obliged to draw and paint the heaven designs of my own painting by myself, I am committing the crime of solitude.

Ok, so what is heaven in my painting? A life where sharing brings productivity, thus a life which moves, which improves, evolves and rejuvenates. I have always shared with myself, I have always produced on my own, I evolved on my own. All these lines I wrote, all these melodies I murmured, all these figures I drew and the steps I have taken are a result of me sharing with myself. I think that is the reason why my birth certificate and me, we are no longer at the same age.

While I was doing the drawings of my life, I was not alone in the sense of absence of people, there have always been many people around me. Many people I live the external world with, many people that I truly like. But "the opposite of solitude is not togetherness, it is mutual affinity, friendliness and sensibility, comprehension" [1] My solitude is a result of not being able to find this affinity and sensibility. I cannot share what is inside me and I cannot produce what is inside me with the people around me, that is to say the thoughts on my mind and the feelings of my heart. Because no one is that close to me and those who have come close do not have that affinity and sensibility. Or they get scared easily when I ask for closeness. My brush and my technique are very strong so I can take care of myself but then I never give a chance to those brushholders if I am not convinced that they are not at least as strong as my brush.

But I am fed up. Of course it is not easy for those who see me from the outside, seeing me, who is pattering incessantly in joy among many people, to diagnose the disease of loneliness. And I believe that those who cannot diagnose cannot heal. Therefore it is only in front of those who make me believe that they can give the correct diagnosis and heal that I open my wound. Because I know those ones are those who are stricken from the same trouble, the same pain, this is why they were able to understand me, and therefore I believe those people who expect the same from each other can heal each other.

It is not that I did not look for such people for the longest time. I looked for them but it did not happen. I do not aim perfection in this search, I know what is perfect is just the ideas, experiences are just their projections. Plato says : a carpenter does not build the table because he knows the table, he has the idea of a table in his mind and he takes this idea and turns it into reality. As he builds more and more tables, he comes closer to the idea in his mind, but he can never build this exact table he has in his mind. I have the idea of what is perfect so I can get closer to this ideal in time. I do not offer perfection, I only offer the best that I have in my hands. Nor am I expecting what is perfect but I believe there are certain things in life that are minimum level but that are so vital and I believe it is my right to expect them: I think I deserve these things: to be loved, to be understood and to be given permission to love and to understand. In this world where it is still a matter of defense whether or not humans have a right for wrong thoughts, who will grant me this very personal right? Of course, only time will tell.

I had said: What should I include in my present, in my today so that I can reach the tomorrow I wish for? I should include, the opposite of solitude, this mutual affinity and sensibility, comprehension and intimacy to my present day. I should mutually love and be loved, understand and be understood in this affinity and comprehension. I should share and produce with people in this kind of an interaction, whatever it is that I share and produce. Because the tomorrow I want is the tomorrow where I can be an individual that deserves, that is fit, to be called a human. Solitude does not make you human. Who can claim that a person who is alone is human or what good is it that he is human if he is all alone? And a philosopher thinks he is guilty.

While I was in this continuous effort, what I encountered was always the "Desert Signalers". [2].

“ The desert fog

that hides us from the gazes

heavy fog

the relationships were covering distance

in a passageless solitude

During these times of a love

the visible and invisible obstacles

replace one another.

caravans loaded with silk show up first, the first days

that is to say the hopes, the dreams will come

and will materialize

those things you have kept bottled up until then.

but the caravans come and go,

and then you are left with the deserts. "

Every time I read this poem, it hurts another piece of me, each line is cutting like a knife, cutting deep and making me bleed. Well is there any knife as sharp as those which have been sharpened by reality? Thank God in the following lines of the poem it is said:

“.... somewhere in the world

someone who writes the poem of the same signals

one day comes, leaves the poem aside and looks at the desert.”

Of course, the one would look, of course, but I hope he not only looks but also sees the oasis in this desert.

************************

The stories are only experienced by those who can narrate them.

The same, maybe the experiences present themselves only to those who can live them.

Paul Auster ( Locked Room)

MISS EVLIYA CELEBI

BEŞİKTAŞ, November 9, 1995

[1] Richard Bach[2] The poet of this poem is Murathan Mungan, the name of the poem is Desert Signalers.

The KA of Me

One of my favourite books I read as a child, if not the favorite one is "Morning Star" by Henry Rider Haggard. In Turkish the name of the book was translated as "The Daughter of the Pharaoh". Today I started rereading it after so many years. The last time I read it was when I was in Boston, because I had carried the book with me all the way to Boston from here then. Somehow I lost this copy I had as a child, probably while I was in Boston.

Only today it occurred to me to look it up on the internet and there I found it on several free-classics web sites. One goes like this:

http://www.classicreader.com/book/1543/

I wanted to share it with you. I don't know if you guys will be able to read it through a child's eyes, I dont know when I reread it, if I will still appreciate it as much as I used to do so as a kid. For me, this was good literature then.

This is not one of Haggard's well known books. The most famous one he wrote was "She", which is also available on free-classics e-book websites for those who wish to read it. I had looked the book up on the internet some years ago to see what the original name of the book in English was. I probably entered poor keywords that I was not able to find it until today. Seeing the name of the book as being "Morning Star", I was really startled:

When I was 9 years old, I wrote a book on sci-fi , entitled "The Queen of Venus". When I was 6 years old or so, I was a huge fan of the TV series Battlestar Galactica and from that point on never gave up on appreciating good science-fiction. Thanks to BSG, I became addicted to reading and learning anything on space. I even had dreams of becoming an astronaut.

Well as years went by, I felt more "grounded" yet when the cyberspace, the internet got into my life, Galaxy (the name I had used for my heroine in Queen of Venus) became my cyberspace nickname. I had a special interest in the planet of Venus, for the sole reason that it was rotating around itself from west to east, unlike all other planets in the solar system which rotate from east to west. This major difference was good enough to distinguish it as a special planet for me. Of course I also had not missed the fact that Venus, the morning star was the brightest celestial object after the moon in our dark skies.

I always thought that it was thanks to my interest in sci-fi that I developed this obsession with Venus. Yet, today seeing the book Morning Star, I remembered that although the name of the book was translated differently into Turkish, inside the book, one could still find the mention that Neter-Tua (daughter of the Pharaoh) was the Morning Star.

To make a long story short, today I figured out that probably it was thanks to this book that I discovered Venus and made it the planet I wanted to possess, for it was the brightest seen from the Earth. It was thanks to this book that I created this alter ego for me as a child. Neter-Tua had a Ka to rely on when she got into trouble. I had Galaxy!!!

Having refound the book today surely lit up a dark mood and I got very very very happy.

It has been years since I last read it. Although I read it a zillion times before and although I remember the story in its entirety, I dont remember if the language of the book was a good one. I will know once I reread it again. I also never read it in English before and this time I decided to read it in the original language, despite that fact that the Turkish translation book is still in print in Turkey.

As I mentioned above, the thing I loved about the book was the existence of the Ka, the Double soul of Neter-Tua given to her by the Gods. When Neter-Tua no longer has to deal with a life that has gotten ugly, she calls her Ka, to replace her, while she will go seek solace elsewhere. Ka, is the perfect grantor of justice, teaches all the villains the lessons they are supposed to learn and is ruthless while she does so. Ka is so strong, so wise, so clever, so witty that I wanted to be her, rather than the soft sided Neter-Tua herself.

I don't think I became the Ka as I grew up. I am now making a plea to myself and calling my own Ka, the Galaxy I kow, to set things right in a war I have been figthing for some time. I will retreat to some inner corner while I will let my own Ka do her magic. I dont know if I will restart writing sci-fi tales (sagas?), yet I know my Ka will be more noisy on the paper.

Enjoy the book!

Love,

Miss Evliya Celebi
(Galaxy)

MUSIC

Thank God there is "MUSIC" on earth. It is heavenly. I cannot imagine a world where we did not have music. It is the easiest way of self expression when all else fails. It could take me pages and pages to write about music and its essence in life but instead I will refer to a song of Alan Parsons Project, one of my favourite bands, "The Fall of the House Usher" from their album Tales of Mystery and Imagination. As you know, APP albums are mostly thematic and this one was based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.


Shadows of shadows passing.
It is now 1831, and as always I am absorbed with a delicate thought.
It is how poetry has indefinite sensations, to which end music is inessential.
Since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite
conception, music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry.
Music without the idea is simply music.
Without music or an intriguing idea, colour becomes pallor, man becomes carcase,
home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless.

NOMAD

I am moving again. From Dikilitas to Sisli, closer to the heart of Istanbul. This has been the most nightmareish moving experience I have had, but I am not going to bore you with the details of this story. I am happy that I will be living alone again. Being the master of my own house empowers me. I am sure you would understand what I mean if I told you that I left my house at the age of 11, lived with my relatives for the next three years for attending to a better school in a nearby city, and when my relatives had to move, I started living with other families as a pensioner. Then from my college years on I always shared apartments with other people, with the exception of two years, once in Paris and once in Istanbul when I lived alone.

I can't remember the number of houses I have changed during the past ten years. What is more, it is almost impossible for me to count the number of roommates I have had. This is the lot of someone who had to go to school away from home as early as 11 years old, the inevitable consequence of this experience is me who has turned into a nomad. This may not sound fair to those whose parents had to move from one place to another but I still consider them lucky because at least they had their families with them. As for me, I moved in and out of places and houses and lives of other people because of my own, mostly academic, residual requirements.

I both enjoy and hate this lifestyle. On one hand , I enjoy it because it has provided me the capacity to stand on my own feet earlier than most people, it has provided me the opportunity to see that life can be lived in many ways, in different ways by different people and it has provided me a perspective to figure out the importance of a real hub, a place where you can turn to when your abstract or real travels wear you out. A real home. (I am afraid I still dont have this place where all my stuff can be gathered under one single roof - the fact that even my photographs are in three different houses, here in Istanbul, in Edremit on the Aegean coast at my parents' and in my cousin's basement in Boston should give you a idea of what this means.) On the other hand, I hate it because it deprives you of the continuity of many friendships and routines in life because when you live as a nomad, you face a constant circulation of people, jobs, roommates, furniture, commuting styles etc etc. For a couple of times, this change might be fun but if you do it once a year or more frequently, it is weary. I hate the transition periods where I have to adjust myself to the new routine. I also hate the fact that I could have done many other things with all the money I had to invest for moving.

I am hoping that I will be able to settle to a place one day. At least I seem to have made up my mind to settle in Istanbul for the moment. But I started to feel more and more envious of people who own a house. Yet I still fear that the changing places habit of many years has deeply penetrated my soul and that I will get bored if I settle to a place. It looks as though this is going to be the dilemma of my thirties.

Dear Friends and Foes,

Evliya Celebi was an Ottoman traveler who has written extensively on his journeys throughout the Empire and beyond. When I started my travels abroad (mostly for graduate education), my family started to call me, Miss Evliya Celebi as I hardly ever spent more than six months in one single country before hopping on a plane and changing locations, even if it were for a few weeks. I personally grew to like this name very much, a personality who likes traveling and what is more who likes writing about these travels. Given the fact that the travels we make in life are not always between geographical places but also to abstract locations, given that our journeys are also within our own minds or to other people's minds or long stays to others' hearts and lives etc., I found it most appropriate to describe this logbook as one for a meeting of the minds. In the end, a meeting of the minds is the ultimate purpose of any journey I start out.

Join the ride...

Best,

Miss EvliyaCelebi